Never Look Back
by shan21
Summary: "His thoughts, his attention, and his enormous intellect are being wasted on a young blonde distraction."


**A/N**: This was written for the Doctor & Rose Last Author Standing challenge #4. The theme was "Before and After." I won! *happy dance*

Being a Time Lord, the Doctor can't help viewing events as part of a chronology. Not part of that linear, mind-numbingly boring chronology that human beings cling to. Humans think of time as linear because they have to, in the same way that ancient people had to invent giant sky gods to explain the movements of the moon and the sun. Time Lords, being far superior, understand that time is relative. As such, the Doctor views all things as part of a fluid, ever-changing, malleable mass of timey-wimey _stuff_, a highly complex perspective beyond the realm of human comprehension.

Imagine, then, the Doctor's surprise when his very complex, highly important, not-to-be-questioned view of events past and present became primitively simple. No matter the experience, the Doctor now finds himself organizing memories according to the most rudimentary dichotomy: Before He Met Rose and After He Met Rose.

He's not quite sure when it happened, but it was probably some time after he regenerated. Don't get him wrong, he was good and infatuated back when he had big ears and a fondness for black leather, but she changed him; not just in the way he thinks, but also his physical self. He became one of her pretty boys, and he'll be damned if he doesn't love the way he catches her looking at him out of the corner of her eye when she thinks he isn't paying attention.

He almost doesn't recognize himself, and he doesn't mean physically. He had Christmas dinner in a flat, surrounded by family. Not _a_ family, but _his_ family; somehow he's become a Tyler. He's not entirely comfortable with the idea, but when he considers the alternative, he's even more uncomfortable with that. She makes him feel more human than he's ever been before. His previous self was too angry, too damaged to allow himself this sense of belonging.

Belonging. What a funny word. Longing to be. To be what, though? To be a part of the extraordinary species that he's always admired and protected? His own race was far too cold and dignified to indulge in the weakness of familial attachment, but then, he always was a black sheep.

With her it doesn't feel like he's _playing_ at being human; it just feels right. Rose fits with him so perfectly that he can't imagine why he never allowed himself to get this close to a companion before. Then he realizes that the reason is quite simple. None of his previous companions were Rose Tyler.

On occasion, when he has time to reflect on life After He Met Rose, he wonders if there could be a downside to this newfound humanity. He worries that he might be losing part of himself. Time Lords are, after all, remarkable specimens of advanced life. His thoughts, his attention, and his enormous intellect are being wasted on a young blonde _distraction_.

But it can't be a waste, because she made him feel whole again after that terrible war, and it's her smiling face that drives him onward each day. He can't imagine life without her, but, of course, he won't have to imagine it for long. That's the problem with humans, isn't it? Agonizingly short lifespan, but so much potential to touch the lives of everyone around you. It's coming; the day he'll lose her. He can feel it.

And the time _does_ come.

He has to reconfigure his data matrix: Before He Met Rose, When He Had Rose, and After He Lost Rose. He longs for the simplicity of the previous system. Everything now falls into the third category, and he can't imagine it ever getting better.

He knows now that loving her in that very human way was only a strength so long as he had her with him. Without her, he only feels a horrible, gaping loss. The grief doesn't fade, either. It seems to grow stronger and more solid with every passing day.

After he regenerates, it becomes easier.

It's as if his body hit a reset button, and all of that humanity is gone. He feels so very _alien_ when he's around humans. He is separate; foreign; incongruous; eccentric; offbeat; but above all else, he is very obviously _not_ human. His interactions with people are odd and charming in an entirely different way—outlandish and perplexing.

He finds a new companion. She is combative and hard and ginger (and nothing like Rose). She follows him because she finds his strangeness intriguing. She loves him too, but not in that wonderful, terrible human way. This girl could never imagine him sitting down to Christmas dinner with family. She could never picture him pulling apart a cracker to reveal a pink paper crown for the girl he loves. And it's just as well, because that's not him anymore.

He wonders sometimes if she would even recognize him. If he found her and took her hand and said, 'Run!' would she?

But mostly he doesn't think about her at all, because After He Lost Rose is not the time for indulging in the past. It is a time for moving forward, and finding distractions, and never, _never_ looking back.


End file.
